spindump(8) [osx man page]
spindump(8) BSD System Manager's Manual spindump(8) NAME
spindump -- Profile entire system during a time interval SYNOPSIS
spindump [pid | partial-name [duration [interval]]] [-file path] [-wait] [-findDsyms] [-delayOnSignal seconds] DESCRIPTION
spindump is used by various system components to create reports when an unresponsive application is force quit. Reports are stored at: /Library/Logs/DiagnosticReports/ For normal application force quits spindump will display a dialog to offer the choice to view more details and/or send a report to Apple. ------------------------------------- When run manually, spindump samples user and kernel stacks for every process in the system. The process with the matching pid or partial-name will be sorted topmost in the report, if specified. "-notarget" may be used to avoid pro- viding a target process when specifying a duration and interval. duration is the duration of the sampling in seconds. If not specified, the default of 10 seconds is used. interval is the number of miliseconds between samples. If not specified, the default of 10 miliseconds is used. The -file argument specifies where the report should be written. If path is a file, it will be overwritten. If path is a directory, a file will be created inside that directory with the name following the format <appname>_<pid>.spindump.txt. If a file by that name already exists, spindump will add a unique number to the filename. If not specified, spindump will output reports to files inside /tmp. The -wait flag tells spindump to wait for the process to exist before sampling. If the process already exists, spindump will begin sampling immediately. The -findDsyms flag tells spindump to use spotlight to find dsyms for use during symbolication. The -delayOnSignal argument tells spindump to wait seconds seconds after receiving a signal before exiting. SEE ALSO
SubmitDiagInfo(8), sample(1) Darwin September 11, 2008 Darwin
Check Out this Related Man Page
sample(1) BSD General Commands Manual sample(1) NAME
sample -- Profile a process during a time interval SYNOPSIS
sample pid | partial-executable-name [duration [samplingInterval]] [-wait] [-mayDie] [-fullPaths] [-e] [-file filename] DESCRIPTION
sample is a command-line tool for gathering data about the running behavior of a process. It suspends the process at specified intervals (by default, every 1 millisecond), records the call stacks of all threads in the process at that time, then resumes the process. The analysis done by sample is called ``sampling'' because it only checks the state of the program at the sampling points. The analysis may miss execu- tion of some functions that are not executing during one of the samples, but sample still provides useful data about commonly executing func- tions. At the end of the sampling duration, sample produces a report showing which functions were executing during the sampling. The data is con- densed into a call tree, showing the functions seen on the stack and how they were called. (This tree is a subset of the actual call tree for the execution, since some functions may not have been executing during any of the sampling events.) The tree is displayed textually, with called functions indented one level to the right of the callee. In the call tree, if a function calls more than one function then a vertical line is printed to visually connect those separate children functions, making it easier to see which functions are at the same level. The characters used to draw those lines, such as + | : ! are arbi- trary and have no specific meaning. ARGUMENTS
The user of sample specifies a target process (either by process id, or by name), the duration of the sampling run (in seconds), and a sam- pling rate (in milliseconds). If the sampling duration is not specified, a default of 10 seconds is used. Longer sampling durations provide better data by collecting more samples, but could also be confusing if the target process performs many different types of operations during that period. The default sampling rate is 1 millisecond. Fast sampling rates provide more samples and a better chance to capture all the functions that are executing. -wait tells sample to wait for the process specified (usually as a partial name or hint) to exist, then start sampling that process. This option allows you to sample from an application's launch. -mayDie tells sample to immediately grab the location of symbols from the application, on the assumption that the application may exit or crash at any point during the sampling. This ensures that sample can give information about the call stacks even if the process no longer exists. -fullPaths tells sample to show the full path to the source code (rather than just the file name) for any symbol in a binary image for which debug information is available. The full path was the path to the source code when the binary image was built. -e tells sample to open the output in TextEdit automatically when sampling completes. -file filename tells sample the full path to where the output should be written. If this flag is not specified, results are written to a file in /tmp called <application name>_<date>_<time>.<XXXX>.sample.txt, where each 'X' is replaced by a random alphanumeric character. If neither the -e nor -file flags are given, the output gets written to stdout as well as saved to the file in /tmp. SEE ALSO
filtercalltree(1), spindump(8) The Xcode developer tools also include Instruments, a graphical application that can give information similar to that provided by sample. The Time Profiler instrument graphically displays dynamic, real-time CPU sampling information. BSD
Mar. 16, 2013 BSD